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Rising Mortgage Costs Remain Below 2006-07 Peak

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With home prices mostly holding to an upward trend, more owners are facing rising mortgage costs. But even so, homeowners are still paying less in mortgage payments than they did in 2006 and 2007, when mortgage costs peaked, according to research from real estate data firm CoreLogic.

The typical mortgage payment nationwide in June rose 15.1 percent year over year, according to the report. On a metro level, increases in mortgage payments ranged from 22.5 percent in Las Vegas to 9.2 percent in New York. CoreLogic’s “typical mortgage payment” reflects the monthly amount a borrower would have to qualify for in order to get a mortgage to buy a median-priced home. (It does not include taxes or insurance costs.)

When adjusted for inflation, “payments have trended higher in all of the top 10 metros over the last three years, but they remained below peak levels this June in all but Denver,” CoreLogic notes.

CoreLogic researchers note that mortgage payments still remain below records in most of the country because mortgage rates in June 2006 were about 6.7 percent. Now the average mortgage rate is about 4.6 percent. Further, “the nationwide typical mortgage payment’s high point in 2006 reflects an abundance of subprime and other risky home financing products back then—products no longer widely available—that allowed home buyers to stretch to their financial max,” CoreLogic researchers write on the firm’s blog, CoreLogic Insights. “That created what some people consider an artificial price peak.”